Friday, February 29, 2008

Leap Day

In honor of Leap Day I am creating a list of 29 places I want to visit some are broad and some are specific. In no particular order:

  1. Peru
  2. Alaska
  3. Prague
  4. Antarctica (I have to hit all 7 continents)
  5. Poland
  6. Moscow
  7. Berlin
  8. Hong Kong
  9. New Zealand
  10. Scotland
  11. Portugal
  12. The Great Wall of China
  13. Calgary Stampede
  14. Sicily
  15. Belgium
  16. New Orleans
  17. Grand Canyon
  18. Mt Rushmore
  19. Yosemite
  20. Egypt
  21. The Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain
  22. Singapore
  23. Tokyo
  24. Cornwall
  25. Wales
  26. Dominican Republic
  27. Cuba
  28. Easter Island
  29. Bora Bora

Thursday, February 28, 2008

All Shook Up

Yesterday morning at around 1 AM there was an earthquake in Britain, the highest magnitude in 25 years. That didn't faze me a bit - I slept right through the thing. I have nothing more to say on this subject so I'll sign off for now.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

A Day at the Zoo

In an effort to get out and do more I joined a photography club. The first outing I went on was a trip to the zoo on Saturday. It had been a long time since I had been to a zoo and I have to say there were mixed emotions. Seeing animals in cages and confined spaces was a bit sad while some of them were outside it was still an enclosed space that was surrounded by electric fences. Of course this giraffee couldn't quite decide whether or not he wanted to be inside or outside.




All in all though I did enjoy the time there and got some interesting and amusing photographs. First up was the gorillas, luckily one of them was out and about and was quite curious. I'm not sure how the burlap sack made it into their enclosure but it made for a good shot.



As it was a bit chilly the gorilla decided the sack made a good blanket.


I loved that this little penguin was looking the other way. He knew it was feeding time and didn't want to miss a thing.


I decided to just take a picture of the vulture instead of the animal carcasses that they were feeding on.



The pelicans were much larger than I thought they were. Unfortunately I couldn't get them during feeding time.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Switched On

From February 7th to 14th a number of landmarks in London were lit in an energy efficient manner as part of a program called Switched On London. I was lucky enough to manage to see a couple of the sites and I have to say it was quite different. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

London Bridge
Hays Galleria
Tower of London
Tower Bridge

Monday, February 11, 2008

Censoring Comments

I just did something I have never done on my blog - deleted a comment that a visitor posted. I am typically not one for censoring what people have to say but the comment contained a link to a site of how I should be blogging. I was very skeptical about this link and clicking on it confirmed my suspicions. The site attempted to download software onto my computer - my guess is that this was a trojan, virus or some other sort of nasty item. Luckily I have my security settings set to block the download of items without my consent. To protect the readers of my blog from accidentally installing malware I deleted the comment. In the interest of free speech though I include the posters comment below without the link.


"For a more complete comments, I would advise you to be more detailed information, for example here"

UPDATE: This has now happened 2 additional times since posting this note, as a result I have chosen to enabled word verification for posting comments. This should prevent the automated program from posting comments.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Celebration

My passport was safely returned to me this week which means I am no longer trapped in England. To celebrate I decided to schedule a parade in Trafalgar Square - actually it was Chinese New Year. The parade kicks off a 2 month China in London extravaganza to celebrate the the Beijing olympics and the fact that the Olympic torch will be passing through town on April 6th. It was an interesting time, there were some performers in the parade over from China as well as some local groups.








2008 is the year of the rat.

Monday, February 4, 2008

False Advertising

Last night I did a crazy thing and went to Cheers in Picadilly to watch the Superbowl which made for a very long night, ended up getting home around 4:30 AM. I was excited to go as they advertised that they were going to be showing the coveted ads from the US. Unfortunately that was a big bunch of lies. It was frustarting to see the same boring UK ads over and over during the broadcast of the game. They only had about 3 commercials that kept rotating throughout the course of the game - BORING!

During the game I noticed a pint glass in the bottom right corner of the screen. I asked somebody if that indicated it was time to go to the bar for another drink but found out that SKY sports sells a pub package. This package is much more expensive than the standard package but it enables the pubs to show the games to hundreds of others. SKY then sends out undercover agents to pubs around the area to make sure they are broadcasting via the pub package and not the standard package.

Friday, February 1, 2008

Momentous Blog Posting Today

This is my 100th post, go ahead count them if you want. When I saw that I was about to pass 100 I started thinking about the number and did a little bit of research.

  • A search on Google for "1o0" results in over 4,400,000,000 results.
  • There is a page dedicated to the number 100 on Wikipedia.
  • If a television program hits 100 episodes it then becomes eligible for syndication.
  • Of the 100 top films of all time according to AFI I have seen 34.
  • David Beckham is currently 1 game short of his 100th cap and he won't be getting it next week either. For those of you that don't know a cap is an appearance for a select team such as an international or country team in sports.
  • And of course everybody's favorite 100.......... 100 bottles of beer on the wall